Breaking bad
This was the view from our second floor bathroom to our first floor dining room Wednesday night:
It was an interesting day.
Regular readers of this blog will remember that last month, Nick and I did some sleuthing to discover the source of some moisture in the basement. We found that our soil stack pipe in the dining room wall was cracked, and I was able to patch it so that we didn't have to make an emergency call to a plumber during the weekend.
After getting a couple of bids, we went with a plumber named Joe DeMarco for our work, and he came Wednesday to get started. Here's a look at the pipe (with the fully opened wall) just before they got underway:
Joe and his brother had been working for about an hour when they brought us some news: The T-joint connecting the bathroom fixtures to the soil stack was also cracked, meaning that it, too, had to be replaced. This would require ripping into the bathroom wall and floor in order to get at the misbehaving pipe. So we said sure, why not? We love the smell of napalm in the morning.
Here's the bathroom, sans toilet, getting ready for its close-up:
The toilet ended up in the hallway, just like a bad college party:
No more soil stack in the wall, at least for a day:
Some damage to the foyer side of the wall from removing the pipe:
Bad pipe. Out to the yard with you:
Ceci n'est pas une pipe in the basement:
Now, for the T-joint:
Getting it out required shearing off the ends of the sink and tub lines, which fortunately had been replaced with PVC by a previous owner:
Partners in crime, now in exile:
I got some new riser valves for the bathroom supply lines out of the deal... someday I'm going to buy my own acetylene torch:
We're back up and running now - I'll take and post some pictures of where things stand today. Having returned the bathroom to service, albeit with great collateral damage to the house, we can now decide how much further we want to go with our impromptu bathroom remodel. Thing is, the floor has to come all the way out now, and the rest of the bathroom was not in fabulous shape to begin with. This may have effectively been the point of no return on a remodel.
As Gramps says, it's never a good time for anything.
It was an interesting day.
Regular readers of this blog will remember that last month, Nick and I did some sleuthing to discover the source of some moisture in the basement. We found that our soil stack pipe in the dining room wall was cracked, and I was able to patch it so that we didn't have to make an emergency call to a plumber during the weekend.
After getting a couple of bids, we went with a plumber named Joe DeMarco for our work, and he came Wednesday to get started. Here's a look at the pipe (with the fully opened wall) just before they got underway:
Joe and his brother had been working for about an hour when they brought us some news: The T-joint connecting the bathroom fixtures to the soil stack was also cracked, meaning that it, too, had to be replaced. This would require ripping into the bathroom wall and floor in order to get at the misbehaving pipe. So we said sure, why not? We love the smell of napalm in the morning.
Here's the bathroom, sans toilet, getting ready for its close-up:
The toilet ended up in the hallway, just like a bad college party:
No more soil stack in the wall, at least for a day:
Some damage to the foyer side of the wall from removing the pipe:
Bad pipe. Out to the yard with you:
Ceci n'est pas une pipe in the basement:
Now, for the T-joint:
Getting it out required shearing off the ends of the sink and tub lines, which fortunately had been replaced with PVC by a previous owner:
Partners in crime, now in exile:
I got some new riser valves for the bathroom supply lines out of the deal... someday I'm going to buy my own acetylene torch:
We're back up and running now - I'll take and post some pictures of where things stand today. Having returned the bathroom to service, albeit with great collateral damage to the house, we can now decide how much further we want to go with our impromptu bathroom remodel. Thing is, the floor has to come all the way out now, and the rest of the bathroom was not in fabulous shape to begin with. This may have effectively been the point of no return on a remodel.
As Gramps says, it's never a good time for anything.
